LITMIR.BIZ

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reply he got was the sound of the door snapping shut. Dev had to grin. Even if it made his cut lip burn like a son of a gun, it was worth it.

      He’d finally had the last word with Amanda Bradley.

      THE DRIVE TO Pine Run gave Amanda more than enough time to think about several things. Nevertheless, again and again, her thoughts drifted back to Dev Devlin. Could she really sell her share of the building to him? Could she give in at last?

      A firm answer to that question continued to elude her as she followed a curve in the two-lane highway cutting a path through the rolling hills that flowed like gentle waves over the eastern part of Montana. She remembered her first sight of the area when she was eight years old and a new arrival from the far flatter plains of the central Midwest. To her, the hills had been mountains, and the town of Jester, with its long Western history, almost a small piece of another world.

      Soon after she and her parents had moved into the house Amanda now owned, they’d walked over to Main Street to see the place where her father would be starting his new job. Back then, she hadn’t so much as considered the possibility that she would one day open a bookstore only steps from the old brick building that was home to Jester Savings and Loan.

      That was the same sunny summer day she’d seen Dev Devlin for the very first time, she couldn’t help but recall, and even to her pre-adolescent eyes, he’d been a memorable sight when she’d passed him on the sidewalk just doors down from the Heartbreaker Saloon. She’d never expected him, or any teenage boy, to notice her.

      Yet he had, giving her a slow smile as their eyes met for a brief moment—a smile she’d done her best to return in her own shy fashion. Then he’d continued on his way, swaggering just a bit in his threadbare T-shirt and battered jeans, and she’d thought that maybe she’d made an acquaintance in town, if not a real friend.

      But that was before her young ears had picked up on some pointed comments about the local “bad boy.”

      “That Devlin kid,” a longtime Jester resident had contended within Amanda’s hearing, “is primed to go down the same road as the rest of his shiftless family.”

      “Any girl who gets involved with him is just plain looking for trouble,” someone else had said.

      Having spent most of her brief life being a “good girl” in an effort to please the father she adored, Amanda had taken those comments to heart and given the bad boy a wide berth. Only after she’d returned to Jester as a full-grown woman had she felt ready to take on the man Dev Devlin had become.

      The undeniable truth that she’d done it, had taken on both him and his rowdy saloon, made it ever harder to consider selling out to him now. Could she really give in? Amanda wondered yet again.

      Yes, she finally decided, releasing a long breath. She not only could do it, she would do it…if the fate of four children depended on it.

      Which it just might, Amanda told herself as she swung her gray compact into the parking lot of the brown brick building housing the local division of Child and Family Services. She’d know soon enough what had to be done, she more than suspected. The fact that she still hadn’t shared the news about her sisters and brothers with anyone besides Dev Devlin by no means meant that she’d considered for even one minute backing off on her plan to do everything possible to further her chances of being allowed to provide a home for her newfound relatives.

      With that goal still firmly in mind, she straightened the fitted jacket of her cream-colored wool suit and tried to look every inch the competent and responsible woman as she entered a small reception area. There, she met the Pine Run attorney who had stunned her down to her toes when he’d phoned her after being somewhat surprised himself to learn that she existed.

      “Pleased to meet you, my dear,” Clarence Whipple told her in the courtly fashion of a silver-haired man probably close to seventy. Short of stature and built along thin lines, he wore a three-piece, pin-striped suit with comfortable ease, as though he’d been born into the legal profession. “I know this must be a very important day for you.”

      “It is,” Amanda agreed as they shook hands.

      Clarence pulled a small envelope from his well-worn briefcase. “I have the school photos and newspaper article that initially led me to you. I thought you would like to have them.” He gave the sealed envelope to Amanda. “I also took the liberty of including a recent snapshot of your half siblings, one of several I came across.”

      She put the envelope in her shoulder bag. “That was very kind of you. I know I must have sounded astonished when you first called me.”

      “Yes, you could say that,” he murmured with a trace of wry humor before his expression settled into more serious lines. “I was pleased to be able to tell you about the children, even though I also had the regrettable task of conveying the information that your father had passed away—and under somewhat, er, unfortunate circumstances.”

      Yes, those circumstances had definitely been unfortunate, Amanda thought. She had to appreciate Clarence Whipple’s tact in giving the matter no more than a mere mention now. “How difficult do you think it will be for me to get custody?”

      The lawyer met her gaze. “I can only say that, on one hand, your being the closest relative still living will work in your favor. On the other hand, a drawback is the fact that you’re single, and placement with a married couple is usually preferred. I believe the outcome will depend on whether we can convince the authorities that putting the children in your care is the most satisfactory solution for them.”

      Amanda nodded. “Before things get started, can you tell me more about what their mother was like?” It was something she’d found herself wondering about more than once during the last several days, since she only had the barest memories of the woman who had become her father’s second wife. A tall, full-figured blonde with a ready smile for visitors to Jester Savings and Loan was how Amanda remembered Rita Winslow.

      “She applied for a position in my office soon after returning to Montana,” Clarence said. “My first impression was that Rita had changed from the young, and I suppose I have to say somewhat flighty, woman I recalled from her earlier days in Pine Run. Rather than skirting the issue, as some might have been inclined to do, she was forthright about the details of her life in Minnesota and how she’d become a widow there. When she went on to candidly admit that she needed a job to support her children, I decided to take her on for a probationary period to see how things went. As it happened, she turned out to be a good worker, and I came to like her more than enough to be both shocked and saddened by the accident that took her life.”

      “Thank goodness the children weren’t with her in the car,” Amanda had to say, having already learned during the initial phone conversation with the lawyer that Rita had been on her way to pick them up at a baby-sitter’s house after work when she’d apparently hit an icy patch in the road.

      “Mr. McFadden is ready to see you now,” the young brunette acting as receptionist told them. “His office is just down the hall, first door on the right.”

      They followed directions, and in a matter of seconds Amanda met Haynes McFadden, supervisor of the local division. The long and lean man with a balding head rimmed by sandy hair in turn introduced a middle-aged woman occupying one of the visitor’s chairs set in front of a modern oak desk. “This is Louise Pearson, one of our longtime and most dedicated employees. Mrs. Pearson is currently handling the Bradley case.”

      That name got Amanda’s attention in a hurry. Although they’d never met face-to-face before, she knew that Louise Pearson was no stranger to Jester. In fact, she’d been the social worker involved in the case of a baby left in the Brimming Cup coffee shop shortly after Amanda’s good friend Shelly Dupree—now Shelly O’Rourke with her recent marriage—had become one of the big jackpot winners. Although the episode had ended happily with the mother’s eventual return to claim her child, Amanda had no trouble recalling how Louise had been described as a person to be reckoned with.

      As if to prove it, the woman with dark brown hair well-threaded with gray and pulled

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